Bitterest Regrets
by cartographer
Summary: He's haunted her dreams and waking thoughts, and now he's back. (Followed by The Only Crime is Pride.)


She sits on her throne, silent and still like the statue she wishes she could be. She's had the hall cleared for this. She's not sure of what will happen, what he wants, and she's not sure she can keep up the veneer of the cool, calm Inquisitor, not when it's _him_.

So she waits. She takes the opportunity to clear her mind and calm her racing thoughts as she watches the sunlight through stained glass cast the patterns of clouds on the floor.

It's almost a surprise when one of the great doors creaks open. He walks through, closing the door behind him, and hesitates before dropping his hand and turning to walk up the central path. He's dressed just as he was when he left, with the staff she'd made with her own hands, but he still looks... shabbier, tired, the fur over his shoulders drooping.

His pace is measured, even, and when he reaches the thick rug that carpets the throne approach, silent. It sparks something in her memory, though, something elusive. After a moment's hard search, she has it: something has been walking through her dreams at night, something she couldn't find or understand, and she could never tell whether it was hopeful or ominous or menacing. So it was him, then. Why?

She won't know until she asks him.

She watches him come closer, until he stands just before the small riser on the throne platform. He kneels then, balancing on one knee and three fingers of his opposite hand, and bows his head to her.

She doesn't realize she intends to move until she's already done it, leaning forward, barely restraining herself from stretching out an appealing hand. "_Solas_," she says, shocked. "What are you _doing_?"

He is silent so long that she's half-afraid he won't answer at all. When he does, his voice is nothing like what she remembers; it's dead, rasping in his chest. It makes her heart seize in a sudden ache of hurt and empathy. "I submit myself to the Inquisition's judgement," he says, so flat and emotionless she's nothing to grab onto.

She forces herself to sit up straight, to put her hands back on the arms of her throne, and to _think_ instead of reacting the way her heart wants.

If her feelings had their way...

She turns her thoughts away from that. She'd had so much practice since he left that it's an easy thing to do.

"And what have you done that the Inquisition should judge you?" she asks him, keeping her voice cool.

Again he pauses. "I misspoke," he says. "I do not submit myself to the Inquisition." It's only then that he looks up at her, and she's struck anew by the pain in his eyes. "I submit myself to the Inquisitor."

"Solas," she says, and this time she gets up, dropping to her knees in front of him then squatting back on her heels, clenching her hands into fists on her thighs. Something about his posture, stiff and harsh, tells her he won't be allow himself to be touched. Not yet. "Solas, what's wrong?"

He laughs, sharp and bitter, and gets his other knee under him, rocks back on his heels to match her position. He lays his hands flat on his thighs as he says, "That is not my true name."

She tilts her head in a silent question; she's imagined so many things, so many different reasons for his presence and his absence that she's dizzy with the possibilities. For all of her imagining, though, she'd never dreamt of _this_, that he'd just come back to her and offer her all the answers like they mean nothing to him.

So he tells her. _I am the Dread Wolf_, he says. _I am the one who gave Corypheus the orb_, he says. _I killed Mythal_, he says.

_Fen'Harel_, she mouths in complete shock. She can't get her voice to work, or her brain. Between that moment and this the world has cracked. She doesn't know this man in front of her at all.

"I left to release the rest of the elvhen," he says. He's not really looking at her anymore; his mind is somewhere else, far away. "But when I cracked open the gates, they were gone. Not dead, but..." He sighs, closing his eyes. His back has lost that sharp, unforgiving line; his shoulders curls a little inward, which at least makes him look more familiar to her. He's so tall for an elf that he can afford to slump instead of standing tall, the way she needs to in order to keep up with the humans. She'd imagined it to be a consequence of long, long hours bent over his books in indifferent light, and she'd offered him a massage more than once. It's a touch of familiarity she desperately needs, but at the same time, it's not helping her keep the cool head she needs right now.

"I can't find them," he says, his voice a quiet misery. "Everything I did, everything I risked and gave up and _ruined_ and they're just gone - "

She touches him then, just her fingers on his, and he stills, stops moving and possibly stops breathing. He stares at her hand, and she knows that look from before, knows it _intimately_. He wants to touch her, and he won't permit himself to get so close.

Perhaps the man she knew wasn't as much of a fiction as she thought.

She lifts her hand, watching his face, and she notices the flickering eyes, the way his lips compress to stop himself from speaking, and she knows then that she can't just let him go, or treat him the way he obviously expects to be treated.

She touches his cheek, and he turns his face into her hand and closes his eyes.

Oh, she can forgive him this. If only one thing was true, if the feeling they'd shared was real, then she can forgive him almost anything. A god is one thing. This man is quite another. She's no longer a child who believes that love can conquer all; she's a champion now, someone who knows that success can be bought with hard work and the willingness to endure the pains that can't be avoided. She is willing to work on this for the sweetest of possible rewards.

"All right," she says in the end. He doesn't move, but he does open his eyes, watching her. "I would call that a disaster of major proportions." She scoots a little closer until their knees are touching, puts her other hand on the other side of his face and turns him to look at her. She regards him steadily. "So what do you intend to do about it?"

His eyes widen. "Do?" he asks, with a bitter laugh. "Haven't I done enough?" He tries to turn away then, but she keeps his face exactly where it is. He _lets_ her keep his face exactly where it is. She won't deny the little thrill that sends through her.

"No," she tells him. "No, I'm afraid you haven't."

He searches her face, and for all she knows he can read her mind, but she doesn't care. All he'll find is what she wants him to see, that she forgives him, that she still loves him, and that she can learn to trust him all over again - if he'll let her. She is not the only one he'd hurt with his actions.

His hands on his thighs curl and his knuckles are white with tension. He makes an aborted little movement toward her, and she realizes he wants to reach out for her. Perhaps he thinks he doesn't have that right anymore, and she can't say that she wouldn't have balked if he'd just assumed he could, but she finds that she wants to give it back to him.

It's her choice, this time, knowing all the facts.

"I don't deserve your kindness, Inquisitor," he says, and finally his voice is real again, rich with emotion, longing, pain, and just a little bit of hope.

She shakes her head. "That's not my name," she reminds him, running restless thumbs over his cheeks. "_Vhenan_."

"_Vhenan_," he repeats, stunned; she flings herself at him and his arms close around her. He buries his face in her hair and they sit there for a long, long moment while the stained glass window paints colors on their skin.


End file.
